Mark Horne has done a good job elucidating how martyrdom paves the way for revival and success of Christ’s kingdom in the world, just as it also can bring more hardship and suffering. 

The diverging wheat and tares both growing up together, both benefitting from the watering of blood on the ground, is almost empirical: “Hard times make good men.”

That violent pressure on balance benefits the righteous and establishes the Kingdom, even fleetingly, requires faith in Christ (Heb 11:3–4). A revisionist historian without faith could conclude, and in fact some have, that David and Solomon’s combined monarchy was a net negative for the people of Israel and that they were better off under the decentralized Judges than under tyrannical kings who inflated the currency, caused the division of the people, and removed protections given to families under the Levitical Law. Of course, the Holy Spirit in Chronicles and Jesus himself in the Gospels suggest quite the opposite, that David and Solomon were a sign of God’s goodness and covenantal faithfulness, even amidst their shortcomings (1 Chr 29:25; 2 Chr 1:11–15; 9:22–23; Matt 12:42). 

I would like to apply the cycle of Abel’s martyrdom to the United States in faith. The United States, being a Bible Republic, has instilled much biblical theology into how we govern and conduct ourselves as a nation, and this comes out quite notably in our civil religion. 

We could call American civil religion an imitation of Christianity, but I think that would be too harsh. It can, as a secondary means of grace, like any creed or denomination, become an idol, the object of worship, instead of the means of giving due honor to the God who speaks through it and lives beyond it. Yet civil religion can and has, like any denomination or confession, contextualized and incarnated Christianity to the norms of the United States. It gives a language and vocabulary in which to proclaim the good news of Christ.  

This civil religion, I would argue, has Biblicized the pagan cycle of history put forth by Polybius and Cicero. Presidents Jefferson and Adams, despite their opposition in government, agreed that the Polybian cycle correctly identified an order to political history. They further agreed that the United States should preserve a model of government that had built in flexibility to cycle through the different governments while maintaining the same constitutional model. Their theory was that history continues to move in a cycle as follows: 

1. In a Monarchy, the social emphasis is on robust and productive households. The family is the foundation of unity for society, and so who inherits positions of leadership in future is certain. In this era, religion is renewed, music proliferates, and though violence often accompanies it, it is violence that is largely productive. Conflict is largely constructive, aimed at building character and moral limits are established in this era that are at least amenable to a Christian framework. The currency is usually renewed, and oppression of the poor by inflation desists. Challenges are often posed by deflation and stagnating social hierarchy which can lead to total loss of touch with those not in leadership or even the other lesser magistrates and people of influence. 
2. The Aristocratic turn diffuses the responsibility of productivity and governance from household to influential group of like-minded specialists. Religion often fragments in this period but still takes inspiration from monarchical era. Because society is managed by  a group of likeminded operators, there is more risk that the ideological foundation changes from one generation to another and that eventually a generation gives up on aristocratic governance altogether, threatening future inheritance. This side of the cycle is often more financially prosperous than the true monarchy, though godly virtue becomes optional because it is no longer necessary for success. Specialization of technology, which removes industry from the home and puts it into larger companies or factories, diffuses the negative effects of vice and delays their impact on the home. Republics thus fail because of a sort of elite tragedy of the commons—personal vice doesn’t cause the same level of instability at first glance, and so it becomes more frequent and less policed.
3. In Democracies, individuals actually have greater potential to acquire power but far less inherited or invested authority. The explicit will of the people gives momentary but highly unstable legitimacy to the government. This form of government has more ability to do anything in the heat of the moment (like mobilize for World War II) but can just as quickly turn on their government or some section of the population, instigating greater skepticism on the institutions needed to govern. It is hard, among other things, to invest in long term institutions in a democracy. To survive, institutions must invest in Christian practices inherited from monarchies and republics, especially familial productivity and discipline. 
4. When Democracies decline, they call into Anarchy and/or Dictatorship. These are not necessarily different regimes of government, and they often go hand in hand. No form of government has more power than a dictatorship, but each dictator has no authority to name a successor. There’s very little economic prosperity because of nonexistent trust and fiat currency. Unlike the other forms of government, this form of government can continue in perpetuity. Anarchy or dictatorship is restored through a complete reset of the principles, which is either instigated from within (by grace) or without (from a foreign power).  

It was this first option, which is how martyrdom often operates, that explains the Charlie Kirk assassination, and where we are today. 

Kirk’s death was the death of an innocent Christian, an Abel-like death caused by jealousy and anger at God’s apparent favor upon him (rhetorically, familially, economically, etc.). But the reason that his death is a promise of great favor to us still living is that his death has clearly inspired others to imitate his style of life, to learn and argue better, to get married and have families, to attend church, to embrace a way of life that rejects the roots of anarchy in our society (borderless nations and limitless self-expression, even in matters of gender). 

In other words, Kirk was an emerging prince from our den of generational anarchy, and in his death a martyr was made. His martyrdom seems to have reawakened the American civic religion in a way not seen since Lincoln’s assassination. 

As I explained on my Substack recently: 

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln hoped that the blood spilled at Gettysburg could atone for the sins of the nation. He should have known better. To flip Stalin’s dictum, “A million deaths is a statistic, but one is a tragedy.” Lincoln alone could absorb the shock of America in freefall and then rejuvenate American civic religion. John Wilkes Booth spoke truer than he knew when he quoted the Virginian motto, Brutus’ famed line: Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Brutus not only killed a dictator, he created a myth of Imperial Rome that would survive another four centuries. So when Booth killed Lincoln on Good Friday, after the Alleluias and Hosannas of Lee’s Appomattox surrender on Palm Sunday, the actor’s pistol became the pen which would write Lincoln into the Scripture of the next American century.

I presumed that the only way to renew America spiritually would be Trump’s own death, but I should have known better. The same action never creates the same result twice. Kirk, being an innocent victim, was far more able to create a new America. As I said there,

Charles Kirk, Free Man of the Church, as his name means, was just that. He preached a message of personal and national freedom under Christ, and delivered us from the malaise of our dictatorial managerialism once and for all. His bloodshed was thus that of an ultimate martyr, because in his death sprang forth the possibility of victory now, and the remembrance of the guaranteed victory to come.

His is the best path forward for what it means to be a Christian in America, because at this brief moment, to be an American and to be a Christian come together, “not by conversion of [faith] into [national identity], but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.”

Do I exaggerate? Not today. This combination of Americanness and Christianness will not remain true indefinitely, but coming to Christ through American civil religion is more possible than ever because Charlie has been deified and received a martyr’s crown, renewing the dying symbols of Americanism into a more lucid, clearer faith in Christ. 

This was perfectly encapsulated in the proclamation of the President and his Cabinet of an unvarnished Gospel of God that would have made Washington and Lincoln blush. Family, the backbone of monarchy, received its most deathly blow in the innocent father of a Christian family and the righteous servant of a dictatorial president. As a result, the Christian concept of the family can emerge stronger, bathed in the blood of a patron saint. Meanwhile, the President of our country, a believer of that old civic religion (probably as an end in itself), has been given the opportunity to turn back to Christ, even as his government overwhelmingly has. I pray he answers the gospel of God. 

Even if Trump doesn’t openly turn to Christ in the style of Kirk, even if his heart is too stony, even if like Henry VIII he can’t quite give up the trappings of the old religion, that does not consign us to reject the clear implications of this new American Monarchy. 

Read your Scriptures, pray with your family daily. Apply your faith boldly to the challenges of the day, disciple your children, then disciple your city, then disciple your nation. Evangelize on the street, then bring America to Christ in the church. Our budding monarchy needs teaching with authority, not democratic appeals to consensus. 

You are living on time bought by the atoning blood of Charlie Kirk, so make haste and redeem it.

Jackson Waters is the Executive Editor at the Theopolis Institute. He studies divinity at Trinity Anglican Seminary and received a B.A. from Union University in Anglo-American History.